Review: Scott Berkun's 'The Art of Project Management'

O’Reilly recently sent me a review copy of Scott Berkun’s The Art of Project Management. I’ve read a couple chapters through, and—as the author himself has recommended—have grazed through a bunch of the sections that looked especially interesting to me. See, I have a marker for a non-fiction book that’s really connecting with me—as I’m reading it, I find myself repeatedly cursing the fact that it didn’t exist earlier. I’m definitely feeling that with this one.

Where so many Project Management books fetishize GANTT charts, waterfalls, and abstract planning methods, most of Berkun’s book lives much further down in the trenches—where misunderstandings happen, dates slip, and bad decisions threaten to derail your project. The book is full of really practical advice on handling these challenges in the real world. And, yes, I really wish it had existed 7 or 8 years ago. As it is, many of my bouncer skills were primitively self-taught.

One of my favorite chapters, as you might guess, is called “How Not to Annoy People: Process, Email, and Meetings.” It includes a useful bit on how to write good email that I wish everyone who owned a computer would consider reading and then stapling to their monitor.

Offer an action and a deadline. The best kind of email has a specific intention or request that is clearly stated, and, if appropriate, is tied to a reasonable deadline. It should be easy for people reading the email to understand why they are receiving it, how they are impacted by the action, and what they need to do (before the deadline). Assuming you enforce the deadline (“Requests must be in to me by Friday”), you set yourself up for people to be attentive to future actions you communicate through email, which puts you in a position of power.

There’s a PDF of a sample chapter (Chapter 3: How to figure out what to do) on the O’Reilly book site to give you a flavor. But if your job includes any kind of project management especially in the world of web development, you might want to have a look at this. The skills Berkun encourages go beyond one team member’s role, though—communicating well, meeting deadlines, and moving your piece of the project forward are the skills that make anyone the team’s MVP.

After reading these comments I went back thru my notes from writing the art of pm book - here's some stuff I found:

The best all around simple lightweight non-geeky non-stuffy book on project management I found was Project management: the essential guide. It's a tiny 96 pages, lots of diagrams, and very skimable, simple, concise reading (and it's industry agnostic). I found this too late to make it into the book biblography, but it's a minor gem. Hard to find though (as gems often are :)

For web development and creative projects I liked Friedland's Web project management. It's not quite right for pure design work, but it is focused on a client model of work. I looked at a ton of web dev management books and this was the only one I felt I got anything from.

Anyway, if any of you do check out my book I'd love to know what else you'd like to see covered - I'm always writing essays and plan to write more books, so you're feedback is always welcome at scottberkun.com

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